A Music Video Made with a Cult Film Heavyweight

The director Amy Scott had heard a curious rumor: that Monte Hellman, known for directing films such as “Two Lane Blacktop” and “Back Door to Hell,” taught a film class out of his L.A. home. While Scott was formulating the idea for a music video to accompany the song “Arkansas,” a single off of Elisa Ambrogio’s debut solo album, “The Immoralist” (out last fall on Drag City), she melded her fandom of the cult director with a singular vision she had for the video.

“I was chasing after this unattainable person,” says Scott, who is currently in postproduction on her directorial debut “Once I Was: The Hal Ashby Story,” a film about another enigmatic film director. “I kept seeing Monte’s face.” Scott diligently prepared her inquiry email to Hellman, with storyboards included, and his answer was yes.

For Ambrogio, who’s also in the band Magik Markers, the exprience was equally stunning. “There’s a disassociation when you meet someone whose work you know, and you pretend you don’t know how heavy they are,” she says.

The result is a video that was shot, Scott says, “like a documentary.” Its imagery is West Coast-ethereal, with walks along hills, as well as foliage, a chess game and a dance with Hellman, the latter of which was his idea. “He picked this high-quality recording of a Frank Sinatra song he had gotten,” says Ambrogio, who was clearly smitten with the prospect of a slow dance with the director.

Scott is currently working on another documentary called “The S-Word,” a history of socialism in the United States, while Ambrogio finishes up a tour for the album. As for videos in the future, Ambrogio says she’d be happy making one for each of the songs on “The Immoralist.” “It’s the opposite of how to think about things,” she says, “and changes the context of a song.”